How Alley Cropping Spawned a Tomato Gold Rush A defining drama throughout the history of the Ozark Mountains was an ever-present quest to find an industry to sustain the region’s economy.

Ozark farmers are always on the look out for the regions next cash crop, and in the late 1800s, agroforestry accidentally brought immense opportunity to the region.

Photo of a book with numerous sticker tabs marking up the pages

Book review incoming

It’s amazing to me, how quickly progressives have shifted their views on this issue. And encouraging!

100 Dams Down: 2025 A Big Year for Reconnecting Rivers in the U.S. In 2025, the United States removed 100 dams. One hundred outdated, often crumbling, and frequently dangerous structures were pulled from our waterways across 30 states. In their wake, more than 4,893…

A record year for dam removals reconnects US rivers, reconnecting over 7,900 km of rivers. Many of the structures were obsolete or unsafe, and their removal is already restoring fish migration routes, reducing flood risks, and reviving ecosystems. American Rivers buff.ly/LwcNbjh
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Meet the Grassroots Organizations Burning America’s Land Prescribed Burn Associations, or PBAs, are scrappy, volunteer-run organizations helping keep farms and ranches safe from wildfires.

Excited to document how landowners are building community networks to burn their land

Grocery Update #149: That Town That Bought Its Grocery Store. A Guest Post By Nolan Monaghan.

When this small Iowa town was about to loose their grocery store, instead of consigning themselves to Dollar General hell, they bought it

👇 my latest for The Checkout

How Blueberries and Kiwi Joined America's Fruit Basket Two case studies exploring novel fruit commercialization

With new crop commercialization efforts launching in recent years, I wanted to explore the introduction of the kiwi and the blueberry to American diets to understand what strategies and circumstances led to their success. Enjoy!

Spotify's private session feature was actually designed purely with my annual Toby Keith indulgence in mind

Currently in the bleak part of the year, where the pears are lackluster but the stone fruits have yet to come into play

Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data: That doesn’t mean microplastics aren’t a problem, though

While this doesn't mean that the microplastics don't have a large presence in the environment, the problem may be more manageable than we previously thought (and even if it isn't, the cope is nice)

The future of energy is being decided now. "The US is basically aligning itself as the last big petrostate. We're going to go down with the fossil fuel ship, and China is aligning itself as the first electrostate." [kottke.org]

Pakistan went from below 2% solar to over 25% solar in just 600 days! Less than 24 months.

This graph from @ember-energy.org shows it clearly:

Celebrating the Rural Manufacturing Town Look at the following population density maps comparing the states of Iowa and Kansas.

My latest blog is a cultural exploration of the culture of the rural manufacturing town, an increasingly endangered species on the American map

I'm scheming so much they're calling my house the Hatchery

Croatia declared free of landmines after 31 years Interior Minister Davor Božinović announced Friday that Croatia is officially free of landmines. Thirty-one years after the end of the Homeland War, all known minefields have been cleared — a major mi...

Croatia is free of the scourge of landmines

I adored Everything for Everyone. I told my one friend (who I send book recommendations seemingly weekly) that if she reads only one thing I recommend that it be this.

That is correct. Afaik, the only GM wheat produced anywhere in the world is in Argentina

They found that the few studies promoting this claim were elevated, while the bulk of the literature questioning these claims are ignored. They also find results were overgeneralized to contexts or scales beyond the scope of the experiment and ignored possible alternative explanations for their data

That's not the bulk of the critique. The original paper in nature discussed a general lack of evidence for mycorrhizal networks being as widespread as claimed, that they transfer large volumes of resources to saplings, or that there's any functions similar to communication between plants

As Suzanne Simard brings out a new book, and a film inspired by her "Mother Tree"/ "Wood Wide Web" hypothesis is in development, please be aware that - to use the technical jargon - it's mostly bollocks. A huge media phenomenon, running miles ahead of the science.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

No, it's not. Especially with economics empirical revolution in recent decades. Don't confuse economics departments with the business school

Demand Convenience One of my favorite YouTube channels is Reject Convenience. The core premise of the channel is; to engage with the modern technological landscape, consumers need to contend with the tradeoff between co...

Consumers are increasingly being asked to either deal with corporate enshittification or swear off technology entirely. What if instead we demanded a system that delivered functional, customizable, secure, and durable goods?

It is the anniversary of the My Lai massacre today. I'd say that even more than most years, it's important to remember what happened.

And the role Hugh Thompson, an active serviceman, played in both stopping and publicising it. Despite enormous military, political and public pressure to stay quiet.

For us non-Chicagoans, what's the drama?

I don't want my beans humble. I want them loud and proud

myself and a friend, me holding a bag of flour, my friend holding a can, picture is a selfie

Perennial Farm Gathering haul! Elderberry juice and heritage grain flour milled less than 2 weeks ago!

My favorite entries at yesterday's agroforestry business pitch competition were:
-A tattoo aftercare product made from hazelnut oil
-A compost made from spent mushroom logs
-A gummy made from honeyberries

The rule of thumb is it takes 10 calories of oil to create 1 calorie of food

Much of which comes from one country (Morocco)

I thought the same thing. The whole enterprise felt very cherry-picked, especially given human passages were mostly from 20th century authors and writing styles that are mismatched to modern tastes